{"id":480612,"date":"2026-02-20T21:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T21:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/480612\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T21:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T21:27:08","slug":"bill-lawrence-on-ted-lasso-shrinking-season-4-scrubs-revival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/480612\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Lawrence On ‘Ted Lasso’ & ‘Shrinking’ Season 4, ‘Scrubs’ Revival"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAs the proverb goes, nothing is certain but death and taxes, and that includes shows ending when they had intended to end. Two comedy series co-created\/executive produced by Bill Lawrence<\/a>, Apple TV\u2019s Ted Lasso<\/a> and Shrinking<\/a>, are doing fourth seasons having both been originally conceived as three-season arcs.<\/p>\n

\n\tJason Sudeikis\u2019 Ted Lasso<\/a> is returning three years after the Season 3 finale, which wrapped the adventure of affable American Ted Lasso as the coach of English Premiere League men\u2019s soccer team AFC Richmond. <\/p>\n

\n\tSeason 4, which features the bulk of the core original cast, kicks off a planned new three-season arc chronicling Ted\u2019s next challenge, coaching Richmond\u2019s second division women\u2019s football team. While driven by Sudeikis, the comedy\u2019s return has been welcomed by fans, Apple TV and producing studio Warner Bros. TV. They all have been campaigning for more Ted Lasso, which, years after its finale, remains one of the most popular titles on the streamer globally. <\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: 2026 TV Series Renewals Photo Gallery<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, Apple TV recently announced a surprise early Season 4 renewal<\/a> for Jason Segel\u2019s Shrinking<\/a>, co-starring Harrison Ford. That show also had been conceived as a triptych, with each season tackling a different theme \u2014 grief, forgiveness and moving forward, respectively \u2014 as Segel\u2019s therapist character has been dealing with the death of his wife.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2008, Lawrence\u2019s Scrubs<\/a> received a pickup for an eighth and final season, which ended with what was written as a series finale. The medical comedy was revisited once when it was renewed for a ninth season, which went in a new direction with a largely new cast of interns, including Eliza Coupe, Michael Mosley, Kerry Bish\u00e9 and Dave Franco. Now it\u2019s been brought back again with a revival featuring the OG stars, which premieres February 25 on ABC.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an interview with Deadline tied to the return of Scrubs, Lawrence addressed the three series carrying on beyond their original finales with new multi-season runs.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: \u2018Scrubs\u2019 Trailer: Zach Braff & Donald Faison Are Back In Action In ABC Reboot<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve tried to figure out how to navigate this,\u201d Lawrence said. \u201cEverybody who has been talking to me lately, goes oh, Shrinking just got picked up for fourth season, it was a three-season story, and Ted Lasso is going, and Scrubs is rebooted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe wanted to draw a clear delineation.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cScrubs is different. We made 1100 episodes of Scrubs. It\u2019s an old-school model, and it\u2019s fun to see those characters again,\u201d Lawrence said. \u201cBut when people are saying, Hey, you said Shrinking was a three-season story. Well, first of all, we made 36 episodes of Shrinking, that\u2019s a season and a half of Scrubs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAiring between 2001 and 2010 on NBC and then ABC, Scrubs produced a total of 182 episodes. For its first six years, it delivered between 22-25 episodes a season.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSecondly, what\u2019s cool about streaming television is when you pitch a story for Ted Lasso that has a beginning, middle and end, you can do that story and be done with it,\u201d Lawrence continued. \u201cAnd then, anybody that\u2019s seen the pictures can tell that Jason and his gang are telling a brand new three-season story with Ted Lasso.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: 2026 TV Cancellations Photo Gallery: Series Ending This Year & Beyond<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tRecently released first-look images<\/a> for Ted Lasso Season 4, which will premiere in the summer, show Sudeikis\u2019 character with his new team and assistant coach. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe same way that Shrinking, if the fourth season started and Jason Segel woke up and went, \u2018you know I\u2019ve been thinking about it, and I was still super sad about my wife,\u2019 everybody would be like, What are you doing? We saw that already,\u201d Lawrence added. \u201cBut as a writer, he told 36 stories with these actors and actresses. We have a new story to tell, and that\u2019ll either be, two- or three-season story or it won\u2019t. I never find that stuff daunting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for Scrubs, the new arc will follow the original\u2019s intended series finale, not the actual one. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe picked up this year as if the eighth year was the finale, and we\u2019re starting now,\u201d Lawrence said. <\/p>\n

\n\tGiven the backlash Season 9 received, are we pretending that it never happened? <\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: 2026 Premiere Dates For New & Returning Series On Broadcast, Streaming & Cable<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ll never pretend Season 9 never happened because, if I ever write my own Hollywood story, it was a fascinating thing because it was sold as a spinoff, it was supposed to be called Scrubs Med and be about med school,\u201d Lawrence said. \u201cAnd when I look back, I\u2019m like, oh, as the ninth year of Scrubs, it didn\u2019t work, but as the first year of a show about Michael Mosley and Eliza Coupe and Kerry Bish\u00e9 and Dave Franco, it was interesting. I thought the writers that did it did a pretty good job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tScrubs debuts February 25 on ABC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the proverb goes, nothing is certain but death and taxes, and that includes shows ending when they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[60738,88,43166,27131,13022,92],"class_list":["post-480612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-bill-lawrence","tag-entertainment","tag-scrubs","tag-shrinking","tag-ted-lasso","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}